TubeNet

Happy new year's guys!
As a part of my new year's resolution, my goal is to gain an ear for relative and absolute pitch. My main goal is to learn absolute first since my section always complains about my tuning. In the long run, I would just like to get a good amount developed on these before 2015.
I really like EarMaster Pro 6 but I feel like there is more that I can learn from what is being offered. Solfege doesn't have any "levels of progression" that help me figure out if I should move on to the next level.
So, can I get recommendations on softwares, programs or other things that can help with this??
Thanks!!

cmonte wrote: So, can I get recommendations on softwares, programs or other things that can help with this?

You might have seen this in another thread -

tbn.al wrote:Check this iPhone app out. It is more than just a tuner, but a unique way of looking at intervals. Written by a friend and fellow trombonist Gil Estes.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scale-m ... 36994?mt=8

Of course not much use if you don't have an iPhone (I don't), but it looks like it would be good for playing-in-tune skills.

Scale Master looks pretty cool. Gotta be worth 99¢ for sure. I just purchase it myself. Thanks.

Here's a link to video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LDMlfJcpYc

The Relative Pitch Course by David L. Burge is my highest recommendation. There may be some naysayers, but I found this to be well produced, easy to use, and it greatly improved my skills. It's not cheap, but well worth the money, IMO. I recommend it to all of my students.
I also owned his Perfect Pitch Course, but didn’t really find this helpful at all. I would go with the Relative course if you had to choose.

http://www.discount-offer.perfectpitch. ... epitch.htm

All performing musicians should have a high level of relative pitch... this means that you if you hear a reference pitch, regardless of what it is, you can hear (hopefully sing) any other pitch relative to it. And hear/sing/play it in tune! Also it means that you know the name of every other pitch in the chromatic gamut by its sound relative to the reference pitch's name.

Perfect pitch (the ability to name a pitch by letter when you hear it without a reference point) is not really very useful, except as a party trick. In fact, people with highly developed perfect pitch (usually people who have played well-tuned pianos since a very young age) often have big problems with transposing as their ear tells them one thing and their eyes tell them another.

The best way to develop relative pitch is with a piano and a plan. Pick an interval (for example, a minor third) that you want to learn and then play some note (for example, "A"). Hear the sound of a C above it (or an F# below) clearly in your head, and then sing it, and then play it on the piano to check. I am a strong proponent of singing pitches before playing them. If you sing exactly the pitch you hear - tone quality doesn't matter and most of us are dreadful singers - and then hold it as you play the correct pitch on the piano, you will either be right on or somewhat off. Adjust as necessary and try it again. Part of this process is, of course, memorizing the names of all the intervals. Spend an honest 20 minutes a day doing this and set some goals and you will develop relative pitch in no time.

Ideally you can sing any pitch above or below any note, know the name of it, and (eventually), be able to adjust for intonation depending on context (low major thirds above, high minor thirds, etc.). This last part is quite advanced but really important for playing with other humans, although tuba players are often the ones determining everyone else's intonation!

Start with perfect intervals including and inside of an octave: unisons, octaves, fifths, and fourths. Once you have mastered them and can successfully reproduce those intervals above and below any pitch you can find in the middle of the piano, move on to major and minor thirds. Then sixths (inverted thirds), then major and minor seconds and their inversions, sevenths, and finally tritones (diminished 5th/augmented 4th). Once you have mastered the middle of the keyboard (where most of us can sing), you can move to hearing compound intervals (simple intervals plus an octave). This generally takes most of us out of our comfortable singing ranges but you won't have to sing it to hear it at this point.

One of the really cool things about having excellent relative pitch is that it make coming in on weird notes really easy if you know someone else's pitch right before your entrance. I've found this to be invaluable in playing atonal music as a trombonist, especially when I have to come in after a long rest on a really high note - I just pencil in someone else's note (for example, bassoon sitting nearby has a C#) and then when I have to come in on a high D or the like, I can already hear it and just play it.

This is, by the way, one of the reasons people have to take ear-training in college!

The best way to develop relative pitch is with a piano and a plan

Spend some time singing your parts at the piano. If you can, record yourself singing, too. Learn to sing the degrees of a scale stepping or skipping. You will hear music in a different way after doing so.

I like to play my warm ups with a recording to compare the pitch; it keeps me a little bit more on track.

I must admit I have a problem using a deliberately out of tune instrument to learn to tune. I hate playing with a piano and avoid it whenever possible. It is a totally different set of ears than I use when playing in an ensemble. I would also much rather sing accapella than accompanied by any instrument with artificially altered tuning.

bloke wrote:Whatever we do/wherever we place pitches, the point is the make them sound "just right" to our colleagues. If they sound right to our colleagues, they'll probably sound amazing to our patrons. Hopefully, if they sound "just right" to us, they'll also sound "just right" to our colleagues.

Preach On Brother!

This thread is returning the point about tuning a group and this has to be taught.

I was lucky to have a director who would make each person in the section start a pitch one at a time and hold it in unison. The first few would usually blend quickly, and in a larger section the blend would start to decay as more people joined. We repeated until he was satisfied, and it consumed a lot of time. It was worth every minute. When the large group knows to expect this, their attention to the pitch and blend is very acute through a long rehearsal.

In that band we spent sectional time playing whole note scales, and it was productive for tuning.

Tuba specific: Ivan Hammond was fond of saying: "the person best in tune is the one would adjusts first".

tuben wrote:A-440 is ONLY supposed to be 440 at 68 degrees

We've assigned the letter "A" to the sound produced by vibrations of 440 cycles per second. Yes, many instrument manufacturers say that 68°F to 72°F is the ideal temperature range at which to tune. But A still=440.(at least in the USA) Isn't it the job of the tuning slide(s) (in conjunction with the ears) to allow us to maintain that pitch standard? Yes, pitch changes in response to temperature change which causes the faster or slower vibration of the air column but again, within limits, isn't that adjusted by slide and or embouchure maninipulation. At some point the temperature prohibits us from adjusting our instruments to that standard but A still=A, doesn't it? I'm not trying to be argumentative here just looking for clarification. Physics isn't my "forte".
Happy New Year to all.
Pete

The real question may not be where is "A", but where is "A" in relation to "E" or "F" and in what relationship within the harmonic structure, 5th, 3rd or 7th. Or maybe where is "A" 440 in relation to the "A" 5 octaves up or down. There is where the difference in tuning in an ensemble and tuning to a keyboard, or fret or spinning wheel becomes relevant. There is a difference. Maybe not a huge difference percentage wise, but a huge difference to the ear.

bloke wrote:I have a theory ... that - for the same reason that "stretching fifths" sounds good with piano tuning - ensembles tend to do the very same thing (i.e. large ensembles do it without even realize they're doing it "because it sounds good").

Most believe that they tune "perfect" intervals (which may well be the case, when instrument families of the orchestra are "hanging naked" with exposed chords...ex: the w.w. "Scheherazade" chords...the "Mahler 6" low brass chords, etc., etc...), but I believe that "full orchestra" defacto tuning falls into the same sort of tuning scheme (again) as is used by piano tuners (i.e. high = high / low = low) ... Whatever we do/wherever we place pitches, the point is the make them sound "just right" to our colleagues. If they sound right to our colleagues, they'll probably sound amazing to our patrons. Hopefully, if they sound "just right" to us, they'll also sound "just right" to our colleagues.

I vehemently agree... in fact, I have had specific instances where music directors and colleagues have detected and have commented on that exact process (just "stretch" tuning).

Not to mention the fact that the equal-tempered keyboard tuning is only equally-out-of-tune to begin with...

I have a choir buddy who is very certain she has perfect pitch. In fact she can sing a called note at will and it will match up the that note on the piano. However she inevitably sings a few cents flater than the ensemble. Of course it is obviously we who are sharp. She has a beautiful voice but no one other than she can enjoy it due to her pitch eccentricies. There is nothing relative about some people. I also know an organ builder who lives with equal temperment every day of his life but when he plays tuba in his brass band the relative pitch is wonderful, not only the four tubists, but the whole ensemble. Same guy, two different worlds. I really think it has to be that way, two different worlds.

That last post is getting to the heart of the matter. If anybody is looking for a new business, there might be a market for thermostats mounted to tubas. Maybe an option for a wireless connection to an iphone tuner app could be part of the deal. The owner could look around the room and scold people for not being properly equipped.

This.

tbn.al wrote:The real question may not be where is "A", but where is "A" in relation to "E" or "F" and in what relationship within the harmonic structure, 5th, 3rd or 7th.

I totally agree that the piano is a VERY imperfect instrument and actually I dislike the sound of certain kinds of music played on it. But it is usually the only instrument that most of us (and certainly most of my students) can get our hands on that can accurately and consistently reproduce intervals and chords. We don't have professional ensembles sitting around in our practice rooms ready to play notes and chords for us. I, personally, hate computer-produced "musical sounds" as they tend to sound quite sterile and do not (in my opinion) accurately recreate the sound or feel of pitches produced on an acoustic musical instrument.

The fact is that everything in music is context-specific and very flexible - perfect pitch-havers know that there is a range of a particular pitch, much the same way there is a range of shades of a color like "dark" vs. "light" red, for example. I love watching a trombone section play passages in highly chromatic tonal music where one of them, usually the second chair, is playing the same letter-named "pitch" over and over again but the chords keep changing, so his pitch's role keeps changing, so his slide keeps subtly moving up and down. A=440 rarely holds throughout an entire piece - the temperature of a room tends to go up in many venues as more people breathe and move and play in it, among many other factors. You still have to be able to play in tune!

Any musician can be trained to hear intonation in all sorts of various ways... whether piano (equal temperament) tuning, meantone, etc. In fact, it has to be flexible in music that features non-triadic harmony; intervals will have to be re-learned in order to "sound good." What is important is having a good teacher and later good colleagues/directors with good ears.

tbn.al wrote:I have a choir buddy who is very certain she has perfect pitch. In fact she can sing a called note at will and it will match up the that note on the piano. However she inevitably sings a few cents flater than the ensemble. Of course it is obviously we who are sharp. She has a beautiful voice but no one other than she can enjoy it due to her pitch eccentricies.

Exactly, there is nothing inherently great about being "right" all the time. Relative pitch is much more important in a lot of contexts, but absolute pitch cannot be totally ignored either.

About the OP, if you just spend some time every day with relative pitch ear training on your tuba you will improve. Play a note sing it, try to sing an interval above or below, test it with the instrument. It's not rocket science, no need to rush out and buy an expensive ear training program right away, nothing wrong with doing so though.

Personally I would not spend any money on something that promises to give you perfect pitch, especially if it happened to come on cassette tapes or some other untunable format. It seems if you want perfect pitch you would have to work with perfect pitch like on a well tuned piano, electronic keyboard, guitar or some other instrument that comes very very close to staying perfectly in tune almost 100% of the time.

Also to the OP, if you want to improve your tuba intonation it's a good idea to just sit down with a tuner and learn which notes are sharp and or flat on the particular instrument you are playing, then you need to be able to adjust those notes by pushing or pulling slides and or lipping the notes into close proximity to absolute pitch. If you can do this, it's a good beginning. You also need good general technique on the instrument, the ability to play long tones, to be able to play loud and soft etc.. You also need a fairly decent instrument.

Tubas usually do not play in tune without some kind of finagling going on by the player and sometimes it's nearly impossible to get certain notes dead on, constantly trying to improve upon what you are doing is a good goal though.

For instance if you are playing a BBb tuba and you know that in order to play your second space C in close proximity to being in tune that you either have to push in your 1st valve slide or lip the note up or possibly both or (heaven forbid) have to use an alternate fingering like 1+3 then you have to get used to doing so almost every time. I hope this answer doesn't seem silly or overboard but getting in tune does take a lot of practical application of basic technique.

buy a chromatic tuner like a korg or some similar model and sing whole note scales into it, while watching the guage and adjusting your pitch. start with just Do to re, over and over agin until you can her a good whole step (major second). then move to do - re - mi and do - me, etc... Sounds simple enough, but It is very hard to do at first, however with practice you will be able to hold the pitch steady and get the intervals in tune. play the same scale on the tuba. whole notes or longer at a time. You will be amazed at how out of tune your pitch ideas were.

Also everyday tune your horn to the reference pitch of you horn (Bb, C, Eb or F). Again sing it first into the tuner and then play it. Again you will be shocked at how out of tune the note was, which you thought was in tune.

I did this for about a month back in grad school and it completely changed my perspective on pitch. I occasionally do it to check myself now.

no charge for this lesson today....
k